CCW Vegas 2026: Where Customer Experience Moves from Conversation to Action

Every year, Customer Contact Week (CCW) Vegas brings together thousands of customer experience leaders to discuss what’s next for the industry. 

This year’s event made one thing clear: organizations are no longer asking whether to invest in AI. They’re asking how to make it work inside real customer operations. 

Throughout the week, Liveops joined conversations with customers, technology partners, analysts, and industry leaders about the operational realities of scaling AI, improving customer outcomes, empowering agents, and building more flexible service models. 

From two speaking sessions to a major industry award, CCW Vegas 2026 was an exciting week for the Liveops team.  

AI Has Moved Beyond the Pilot Phase 

One of the strongest themes throughout CCW was that AI has officially moved beyond experimentation.  

Many organizations have launched pilots. Many have implemented new tools. 

The challenge now is operationalizing AI in ways that produce measurable business outcomes. 

Conversations throughout the conference focused less on the technology itself and more on questions like: 

• How do you embed AI into existing workflows?  

• How do you build trust with agents?  

• What metrics actually define AI success?  

• How do you connect customer intelligence across systems?  

• How do you scale AI without creating more operational complexity?  

These discussions reinforced something Liveops has long believed: 

Successful AI isn’t about deploying more technology. It’s about orchestrating AI, people, workflows, and data to improve customer experiences. 

The Messy Middle: Scaling AI Beyond the Pilot 

One of Liveops’ featured sessions brought this conversation to the main stage. 

The Messy Middle: The Operational Reality of Scaling AI in CX 

Led by Liliana López-Sandoval, Head of Technology & Innovation at Liveops, Ali Birouti, Director of Digital Evolution at Liveops, and Brian Cantor, Managing Director at Customer Management Practice (CMP) Research, the fireside discussion explored what happens after organizations move beyond AI pilots. 

Rather than focusing on AI hype, the session examined why so many initiatives struggle to generate lasting operational value. 

Key themes included: 

• AI often fails because workflows remain fragmented.  

• Operational change matters just as much as technology.  

• Governance, QA, analytics, and customer intelligence must evolve alongside AI.  

• Organizations need new success metrics that extend beyond handle time and containment rates.  

• Orchestration—not additional tools—is what allows AI to scale successfully.  

The discussion emphasized that high-performing organizations aren’t necessarily deploying more AI. They’re creating connected operational ecosystems where AI supports employees, improves customer outcomes, and continuously learns through feedback loops. 

Attendees also explored practical frameworks for evaluating AI maturity, redesigning workflows, improving adoption, and building stronger governance before scaling investments. 

Building AI Workers That Help CX Teams Focus on Higher-Value Work 

Liveops’ own Michelle Winnett, SVP of Operations, also joined industry leaders during Level AI’s interactive workshop: 

Building AI Workers 

The workshop focused on a challenge familiar to nearly every customer contact organization. 

Coaches, QA leaders, analysts, and operations teams often spend countless hours gathering data, reviewing interactions, and preparing reports before meaningful coaching or operational decisions can even begin. 

Rather than simply automating isolated tasks, the session demonstrated how purpose-built AI Workers can help organizations streamline quality assurance, coaching, and Voice of the Customer analysis while allowing CX teams to spend more time driving performance improvements. 

The audience participated in a live demonstration showing how specialized AI Workers can: 

• Produce personalized coaching recommendations  

• Audit every customer interaction instead of limited QA samples  

• Accelerate Voice of the Customer analysis  

• Deliver operational insights in hours instead of weeks  

The session reinforced another important takeaway from CCW: 

AI creates the greatest value when it removes administrative friction and enables people to focus on higher-value work. 

Celebrating an Incredible Honor: CCWomen’s Best Workplace for Gender Equity 

While AI dominated many conversations throughout the week, one of the proudest moments for the Liveops team came during the CCWomen Awards. 

Liveops was honored as CCWomen’s 2026 Best Workplace for Gender Equity, recognizing the company’s ongoing commitment to creating opportunities, developing leaders, and building an inclusive culture where women can thrive. 

The recognition reflects years of intentional investment in leadership development, workplace flexibility, career advancement, and creating an environment where diverse perspectives strengthen both our organization and the experiences we deliver for customers. 

For everyone across Liveops, the award serves as a reminder that innovation and inclusion go hand in hand. 

As organizations continue transforming customer experience, building great technology also means building great workplaces. 

Read the full press release

The Conversation Doesn’t End at CCW 

The conversations that began in Las Vegas continue every day. 

Organizations across industries are working through the same questions: 

• Where should AI create the most value?  

• Which workflows should be redesigned?  

• How do you balance automation with human expertise?  

• What should success actually look like?  

Through LiveNexus by Liveops, organizations can move beyond experimentation with practical AI solutions designed for real customer operations. 

Whether through the LiveNexus AI Review & Roadmap, which helps organizations identify high-impact AI opportunities and build an actionable strategy, or LiveNexus Agent Assist, which delivers contextual guidance directly within customer interactions, the focus remains the same: 

Helping organizations operationalize AI in ways that improve customer experiences, empower agents, and produce measurable business outcomes.